Overhead projectors for large audience presentations are well known in the prior art. Such systems typically utilize transparencies for carrying the information to be viewed by the audience.
With advances in modern liquid crystal technology, such transparencies have been replaced by full color liquid crystal display panels driven by video signal producing devices, such as personal computers. In this regard, the liquid crystal display panel is typically positioned on the stage of an overhead projector so the liquid crystal image may be projected for viewing purposes.
While the above described project system has been satisfactory for many applications, such a system is very bulky, heavy and awkward in size. Thus, such a system is not easily transportable by a business person who desires to travel from customer to customer for making sales presentations and the like.
Therefore, it would be highly desirable to have a new and improved liquid crystal projector that is compact in size and easily transportable.
Another problem with the use of an overhead projector in a business conference meeting, is that the projector generally has a very long optics path. In this regard, for example, the typical overhead projector includes a large, tall, upright housing with a raised projection lens in order to eliminate keystoning effects. Thus, such a projector unit does not have a low profile and is not very compact.
Therefore, it would be highly desirable to have a projector unit, which is compact in size and which does not produce images with undesirable substantial keystoning effects.
Other attempts have been made to develop compact overhead projectors by adapting their various parts to be foldable or collapsible. It would be highly desirable to have a new and improved compact projector, which has substantially no moving parts, is relatively inexpensive to manufacture and yet is small in size. In this regard, such a compact projector should have a very low profile to make it convenient to be transported.